Eighty-nine percent of high school students and 50 percent of upper-elementary students have access to Internet-connected smart phones, the survey reports.

Sixty-four percent of students use 3G- or 4G-enabled devices as their primary means of connecting to the Internet; another 23 percent connect through an Internet-enabled TV or Wii console.

Forty-six percent of teachers are using video in in the classroom. One-third of students watch online video lessons to help with their homework — the “Khan Academy effect” — and 23 percent of students watch video created by their teachers.

I’ve found web sites like Khan Academy a wonderful supplement, as they provide an avenue for on-demand tutoring. I just wonder about the efficacy of spending tax dollars on technology that may not show a return on investment.

Inasmuch as the technology listed in the article is outside the purview of the public education system the question that’s implied is to what extent the current model of public education can adapt, or even survive, the onslaught of that technology.

The question, as I see it, is to what extent will this technology improve learning, and will the concomitant distractions overwhelm any benefit? (I’ve seen the distractions first-hand.)

While I recognize the benefits of technology in the classroom, I see a danger in it being fetishized and being used simply because it is seen as newer and better (I’ve seen this, too), irrespective of the source of the technology (i.e., school-provided or student-owned), and irrespective of the type of school (i.e., public or private). My questions here are not about the efficacy of public education vs. newer models but, rather, will this technology make a difference in student achievement. I’m a bit skeptical, but interested nonetheless.

Do you throw in these non-sequiturs just to be a pain in the backside? Do you like to start arguments for no reason? I asked about whether all of the the technology had any effect and you throw in spending? Did I ask about that? Is that the topic? From the various threads in which I have seen you, you seem to be spoiling for a fight and will direct things in such a manner as to achieve that. You are a troll and I shall no longer feed you.

Oh settle down. Now everyone knows that, rather then being interested in discussing the topic you’re someone who pronounces profound truths and expects everyone else to genuflect before them.

That hardly makes you unique. Rather it makes you just another mundanity who’s incapable of considering any points of view but your own. That trait may serve you well in other parts of your life but in these environs you’ll have to develop a modicum of discipline because you’re in no position to dictate.

The original post was about ten technological trends in education. It was you who opened up the topic of efficacy and having opened the door, other then throwing a temper tantrum, you have no say over what direction the discussion takes.

On the basis of that temper tantrum I’d say you have no worthwhile response to the observation that substantially increased budgets have had no effect on systemic efficacy. Since you have no worthwhile response to make, and unwilling to face up to that fact, you choose to try to make me the topic.

Good luck with that tactic. It’s hardly served the proponents of the public education system particularly well but what else do you have? You can’t point to the successes of the public education system so you attack those who notice its shortcomings. How’s that working out for you?

Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring is boasting three finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search, the country’s oldest and most prestigious research contest for high school seniors.

The three Montgomery Blair students tapped by the Intel Foundation as finalists in this year’s competition are:

•Shaun Datta, whose research project is “Saturated Nuclear Matter in the Large Nc and Heavy Quark Limits of Quantum Chromodynamics”

•Neil Davey, with “Early Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment through the Detection of Circulating Tumor Cells using Drop-based Microfluidics”

•Jessica Shi, with “The Speeds of Families of Intersection Graphs”

In addition, Benjamin Freed, a student at Governor Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick, also has been named a finalist. His project is “Identification of Novel Regulatory Mechanisms of the K-Ras Oncoprotein.”

Which has what to do with “10 tech trends in education”? Nothing, the point being I assume that elaborate disdain’s a substitute for a worthwhile reply.

Must be kind of tough then to watch the steady spread of alternatives to the public education system. It is convenient though that you make more or less continual references to bodily functions and pornography. Brackets your value quite neatly.

Magnet schools are a repudiation of everything public education proponents claim as qualities of the public education system. They’re selective, private schools run at public expense because the rich and the powerful can just take their kids and send them to explicitly private schools. The accomplishments of the kids that go to magnet schools are no more reflective of the public education system then the accomplishments of kids that go to private schools.

Don’t you think it’s exciting to be alive to watch the end of the failed experiment that’s public education?

Allen– not the rich– they went to SIdwell, or Georgetown, or Connel;y School…

Middle Class. And while now they’ve switched to ‘holistic admissions’ (whatever THAT is…), it used to be a straight-up exam school. Top 100 kids in the county? Bam. You’re in. Rich, poor, whatever.

Most magnet kids would never have been able to afford private school, and they were weighted toward middle class kids fleeing lousy home school districts. Because the rich kids didn’t need to ride an hour on the bus for a good education.

My kids did travel sports with kids from all over MoCo and never knew anyone from its top high schools who applied to one of the magnets. As DM said, the top kids from weak schools did. Parents of good, but not magnet-level, kids sent them to private, often Catholic, schools if they could manage it. I knew many of those.

My kids also played with kids from rich families who went to St Albans, Sidwell, Georgetown Day, National Cathedral, Bolton Arms and upper-middle-class kids from other expensive privates. Magnets give less affluent kids an escape from public systems which refuse to challenge even above-average kids, let alone the gifted, with the exception of a few schools in very affluent areas. Vastly less resources are given to our top kids than are given to the bottom quarter – maybe to the bottom third.

Deirdre, my knowledge of magnets is informed by a piece published rather a long time ago in the Detroit News about the acceptance practices of Detroit Public Schools magnet schools. The student population was skewed in favor of the rich or the politically powerful which touched off a brief flurry of outrage. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out nothing’s changed in the intervening years and that the practice is not at all uncommon.

In fact, magnet schools could be seen as an institutionalized vote of no confidence in the institution of public education. By dealing with the smart kids by sequestering them in their own school the inherent inflexibility of the public education system’s laid bare. I’ve commented before about the treatment of kids at the other end of the bell curve by the public education system and how that tragedy required legislative interference to resolve to some reasonable extent.

To get back to article, I thought it was a bit too techno-centric. It seems to be of the “sprinkle techno-fair dust on the current system” type of article without giving any consideration to the historical facts of technological change which is that it overturns old assumptions, falsifies old truths and rides roughshod over old taboos.

The ten trends examined, to the extent they are, are all placed within the context of the current system which is demands kids be dragged to the school. But all ten of those trends are indifferent to location. When education can occur anywhere what’s the compelling case for trundling kids around town?

I could see how Detroit might have its own issues. But in Montgomery County the Rich and Politically Connected have the advantage of prestigious zip codes and schools that never seem to get the bad neighborhoods zoned into them. The county’s ‘best in the US’ is actually two school systems– one for the wealthy zip codes, which is top notch, and one for the poorer zip codes, which is worse than the ‘mediocre’ schools in the Midwest, for instance. In that situation, the magnets really are about ‘saving’ the bright kids from horrible schools—while increasing the percentages of whites and asians in certain districts w/o resorting to forced busing,.,.

We don’t know. Partly because much of this is too new. But also because just about no educational research tries to do what is taught at the beginning of most high school science classes as “the scientific method”: controlled experiments.

That first fact will change. Alas, I see little evidence that the second will.